Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a method for conducting a magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) examination of an examination subject, as well as a magnetic resonance apparatus and a non-transitory data storage medium to implement such a method.
Description of the Prior Art
In a magnetic resonance apparatus, also known as a magnetic resonance tomography system, the body of an examination subject, in particular a patient, is typically exposed to a relatively strong basic magnetic field, of 1.5 or 3 or 7 tesla for example, with the use of a basic field magnet. In addition, magnetic gradient fields are activated with the use of a gradient coil arrangement. Radio-frequency pulses, such as excitation pulses, are then radiated by suitable antennas of a radio-frequency antenna arrangement, which result in the nuclear spins of certain atoms having excited into resonance by the radio-frequency pulses, and those nuclear spins are tipped through a defined flip angle relative to the field lines of the basic magnetic field. During the relaxation of the nuclear spins, radio-frequency signals, referred to as magnetic resonance signals, are emitted, and are received by suitable radio-frequency antennas, and then processed further. Finally, the desired image data can be reconstructed from the thus acquired raw data.
A magnetic resonance fingerprinting method is known from the article by Ma et al. titled “Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting”, published in Nature, 495, 187-192 (14 Mar. 2013). The magnetic resonance fingerprinting method constitutes a quantitative magnetic resonance method by which quantitative values of tissue parameters of an examination subject can be determined. An advantage of the magnetic resonance fingerprinting method in this case is that a number of tissue parameters, for example a T1 relaxation time and a T2 relaxation time, can be acquired simultaneously in a single measurement. In this way the magnetic resonance fingerprinting method can make the use of a number of different scan sequences for acquiring the multiple tissue parameters unnecessary, and thereby reduce the complexity and/or scan time of a magnetic resonance examination.